Every company claims to value its customer feedback, but the truth is that many of them don’t pay enough attention to what their customers are saying. Good customer feedback can be precious and should be taken seriously. It gives you an insight into how people view and experience your brand, products, or services and can help you make better decisions about future investments and strategies. Doing so will allow you to refine and enhance your offering, improve customer satisfaction, and encourage long-term loyalty.
How to Collect Good Customer Feedback?
Many businesses use email surveys to get customer feedback. They are relatively easy to produce and distribute and can elicit some useful responses, but they are also easy to ignore or pass over. In a busy inbox, they are prime targets for deletion. Also, while some companies rely heavily on simple star ratings and open-ended comment forms because they are the least effort for customers to fill in, these methods are of limited use when it comes to making changes based on feedback.
This is because there is often little thought given to the scores and comments provided, so any decisions made based solely on such limited feedback can be misguided. So, what are the best ways to get honest feedback and ensure you’re making informed decisions about your business model?
Using Chatbots
Chatbots are proving to be one of the most effective ways to acquire customer feedback and improve customer satisfaction. With a chatbot, you can automate customer interaction, send customer-specific requests based on their own purchase experience, and collect valuable feedback in minutes. The process can be made easier now for businesses because they can build their own chatbot in minutes that will take care of much of the task.
Calling the Customers Directly
Calling customers directly is an excellent way to get feedback and ensure that feel secure and involved in providing it. Number masking capabilities allow customers to remain anonymous, while Voice API makes it easy for businesses to automate surveys and collect feedback. You can even use this technology to notify customers of their survey results and seamlessly integrate with mobile apps or other customer-facing platforms.
However, most people prefer to be spoken to by a real representative of a company, so direct contact remains one of the best ways to collect feedback. If your customer service team is trained in the art of effective questioning, they can ask for more detailed information and provide a better overall experience whilst getting some really valuable first-hand feedback.
Speak to Customers on Their Favorite Channels
It’s a good idea to speak to customers about the channels they use every day. WhatsApp and SMS have become the go-to communication methods for many people, so it makes sense to use these platforms to ask for their opinions on your business.
Businesses can, for example, use the WhatsApp Business Platform API or an SMS API to partially automate and personalise any post-sale request for feedback, And of course, you’ll be able to analyse and measure your feedback to spot any trends that become apparent.
Conclusion
It’s important to remember that most customers generally want to help businesses get better. It’s within their interests to help the businesses they frequent to meet their needs. But they are also busy with their own lives and might find it difficult to find the time to provide helpful feedback. That's why it’s so essential to make your approach as personalized and genuine as possible.
It’s also extremely important to understand that your customers don’t owe you any feedback. They fulfilled their part of the deal by giving you their money so any feedback you receive is very much a bonus. Hassling customers for feedback is a good way to lose them.
The other important thing to remember is that feedback is only really useful if it’s acted upon. The temptation for any business is to simply collect 5-star reviews and positive comments to post on their site and to help their overall scores. As useful as this social proof is, the really valuable feedback is sometimes the most difficult to read. Remember that it’s acting on the complaints that is most likely to end up improving your customer service in the long run.
By using chatbots, calling customers directly, and meeting them on their favorite channels, you’ll be well on your way to collecting feedback that can help you improve your business model.
